into his tunic. «Then I’ll go alone,” he declared heatedly.
«No need for that quite yet.» Garet Jax swung his pack over his shoulder and started across the clearing once more. «First we’ll see you safely to Culhaven, the Gnome and me. Then you can tell the Dwarves this story of yours. The Druid and your sister should have passed that way by now — or word of their passing reached the Dwarves. In any case, let’s find out if anyone there understands anything of what you’ve been telling us.»
Jair stalked after him hurriedly. «What you’re saying is that you think I made this all up! Listen to me a minute. Why would I do that? What possible reason could I have? Go on, tell me!»
Garet Jax snatched up the Valeman’s cloak and blanket and shoved them at him as they went. «Don’t waste your time telling me what I think,” he replied calmly. «I’ll tell you what I think when I’m ready.
Together they disappeared into the trees, following the trail that led east along the banks of the Silver River. Slanter watched them until they were out of sight, his rough yellow face twisting with displeasure. Then, picking up his own pack, he hastened after, muttering as he went.
Chapter Twelve
For the better part of three days, Brin Ohmsford and Rone Leah rode north with Allanon toward the Keep of Paranor. The path chosen by the Druid was long and circuitous, a slow hard journey through country made rugged by steep slides, narrow passes, and choking forest wilderness. But at the same time the path was free of the presence of Gnomes, Mord Wraiths, and other evils that might beset the unwary traveler, and it was for this reason that Allanon had made his choice. Whatever else must be endured on their journey north, he was determined that in the making of that journey he would take no further chances with the life of the Valegirl.
So he did not take them through the Hall of Kings as he had once done with Shea Ohmsford, a match that would have forced him to leave their horses and proceed afoot through the underground caverns that interred the kings of old, where traps could be triggered with every step forward and monsters guarded against all who trespassed. Nor did he take them across the Rabb to the Jannisson Pass, a ride through open country where they might be easily seen and which would take them much too close to the forests of the Eastland and the enemy they sought to avoid. Instead; he took them west along the Mermidon through the deep forests that blanketed the lower slopes. of the Dragon’s Teeth from the Valley of Shale to the mountain forests of Tyrsis. They rode west until at last they reached the Kennon Pass, a high mountain trail that led them far into the Dragon’s Teeth to emerge miles further north within the forests that bound the castle of Paranor.
It was at dawn of the third day that they came down from the Kennon into the valley beyond, a dawn gray and hard as iron, clouded over and cold with winter’s chill. They rode in a line, traversing the narrow pass through mountains bare and stark as they loomed against the morning sky, and it was as if all life had ceased to be. Wind swept the empty rock with fierce gusts, and they bent their heads against its force. Below, the forested valley that sheltered the castle of the Druids stretched dark and forbidding before them. A faint, swirling mist hid the distant pinnacle of the Keep from their eyes.
As they rode, Brin Ohmsford struggled with an unshakable sense of impending disaster. It was a premonition really, and it had been with her since they had left the Valley of Shale. It tracked her with insidious purpose, a shadow as murky and cold as the land she rode through, an elusive thing that lurked within the rocks and crags, flitting from one place of hiding to another, watching with sly and evil intent. Hunched down within her riding cloak, drawing what warmth she could from the bulky folds, she let her mount choose its path on the narrow trail and felt the weight of the presence as it followed after.
It had been the Wraith mostly, she thought, that fostered that premonition. More than the harshness of the day, the dark intent of the Druid she followed, or the newfound fear she felt for the power of her wishsong, it was the Wraith. The Druid had assured her that there were no others. Yet such a dark and evil thing, silent in its coming, swift and terrible in its attack, then gone as quickly as it had appeared, with nothing left but its ashes. It was as if it were a being come from death into life, then gone back again, faceless, formless, a thing without identity, yet above all, frightening.
There would be others. How many others she did not know nor care to know. Many, certainly — all searching for her. She sensed it instinctively. Mord Wraiths — wherever they might be, whatever their other dark purposes — all would be looking for her. One only, the Druid had said. Yet that one had found them; and if one had found them, others could. How was it that that one had found them? Allanon had brushed aside her question when she asked it. Chance, he had answered. Somehow it hid crossed their trail and followed after, choosing its moment to strike when it thought the Druid weakened. But Brin thought it equally possible that the thing had tracked the Druid since his flight from the Eastland. If that were so, it would have gone first to Shady Vale.
And to Jair!
Odd, but there had been a moment earlier, a brief, fleeting moment as she wound her way down through the grayness of the dawn, alone with her thoughts, wrapped in the solitude of wind and cold, when she had felt her brother’s touch. It was as if he had been looking at her, his vision somehow reaching past the distance that separated them to find her as she made her way out of the great cliffs of the Dragon’s Teeth. But then the touch had faded, and Jair was as distant once more as the home she had left him to keep watch over.
This morning she was worried for Jair’s safety. The Wraith might have gone first to Shady Vale and found Jair, despite what Allanon said. The Druid had dismissed the idea, but he was not to be trusted completely. Allanon was a keeper of secrets, and what he revealed was what he wished known — nothing more. It had always been that way with the Ohmsfords, ever since the Druid had first come to Shea.
She thought again of his meeting with the shade of Bremen in the Valley of Shale. Something had passed between them that the Druid had chosen to keep hidden — something terrible. Despite his assurances to the contrary, he had learned something that had disturbed him greatly, had even frightened him. Could it be that what he had learned involved Jair?
The thought haunted her. Were anything to happen to her brother and the Druid to learn of it, she felt he would keep it from her. Nothing would be allowed to interfere with the mission he had set for her. He was as dark and terrible in his determination as the enemy they sought to overcome — and in that he frightened her as much as they. She was still troubled by what he had done to Rone.
Rone Leah loved her; it was unspoken between them perhaps, but it was there. He had come with her because of that love, to make certain that she had someone with her whom she could always trust. He did not feel Allanon was that person. But the Druid had subverted Rone’s intentions and at the same time silenced his criticism. He had challenged Rone’s self–designated role as protector; when the challenge was accepted, he had turned the highlander into a lesser version of himself by the giving of magic to the Sword of Leah.
An old and battered relic, the Sword had been little more than a symbol Rone bore to remind himself of the legacy of courage and strength–of–heart attributed to the house of Leah. But the Druid had made it a weapon with which the highlander might seek to attain his own oft–imagined feats–at–arms. In so doing, Allanon had mandated that Rone’s role as protector be something far more awesome than either she or the highlander had envisioned. And what the Druid had made of Rone Leah might well destroy him.
«It was like nothing I could ever have imagined,” he had confided to her when they were alone that first night after leaving the Valley of Shale. He had been hesitant in his speech, yet excited. It had taken him that long just to bring himself to speak of it to her. «The power just seemed to explode within me. Brin, I don’t even know what made me do it; I just acted. I saw Allanon trapped within the fire and I just acted. When the Sword cut into the fire, I could feel its power. I was part of it. At that moment, I felt as if there were nothing I could not do — nothing!»
His face had flushed with the memory. «Brin, not even the Druid frightens me anymore!»
Brin’s eyes lifted to scan the dark spread of the forests below, still misted in the half–light of the harsh autumn day. Her premonition slipped through the rocks and across the twist of the pass, cat–quick and certain. It will show no face until it is upon us, she thought. And then we will be destroyed. Somehow I know it to be so. The voice whispers in my thoughts of Jair, of Rone, of Allanon, and of the Mord Wraiths most of all. It whispers in secrets kept from me, in the gray oppression of this day, and in the misty dark of what lies ahead.
We will be destroyed. All of us.
They were within the forests by midday. All afternoon they rode, winding their way through mist and gloom,
